Zucchini Koftas in Creamy Coconut Tomato Sauce

My family moved to India from Kuwait when I was just out of high school.  At a confused end of teenage years, academic pressures and moving countries left me at very angry-at-the-world grumpy seventeen year old. To add to the pain, we were shifting to a town. A remote town.

There was nothing much to do at first. No scratch that, there was nothing to do at all. Cousins, whom now I know where ticketed by Ammi came to hang out with me, often returned disappointed in my lack of interest to create a conversation. The only activity that felt remotely similar to my life in Kuwait was reading. I begged cousins to borrow books from the school library. I asked them to hunt down people who might have used books. Most of the books I gathered had been left unattended for years. I felt a terrible comfort in those yellowed pages, sniffing through the smell of old pages that sometimes would surprise me with  the stale smell of dried roses. Days would pass into nights, and I would for all I can remember, sleep reading. 

Amaranth Pea Fritters (Amaranth Vada)

We rushed through the narrow passage hunting down our seats in an attempt to get the window seat. It was for the first time we three sisters were travelling alone and we debated for a while who's going to be the odd one who had to sit with someone else. Being the eldest, I sat my younger sisters together and took to my separate seat anxiously waiting for who would come next to mine.

A huge lady walked to the seat and before she settled, I wondered if she would fit into the cramped economy class seats with barely any leg room. Would she be able to get up if I had an emergency nature's call? What if she snored? The feeble mind of a 13 year old.

Masala Egg Scramble - Anda Bhurji

I sat on the staircase cuddling the bundle of clothes I had tied in my mom's dupatta (a multi purpose long scarf worn by South Asian women). The scent of my mom's on the dupatta was reassuring that I wasn't far from home. Far as much as a couple of metres feel like when you are a 10 year old. Dad and I had got into an argument over the volume of the television which disturbed his precious afternoon nap. I protested as I always did until dad went ahead the unplugged the wire. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I went to my room.